A Smashed Vase
by Klioud
Summary: Birthright. Pre-Chapter 26. Contains Spoilers. Xander rides out to meet Corrin in battle.


Author's Note: _This was the first story I wrote on AO3, nearly three years ago now. I recently rewrote it as a warm up exercise._

* * *

"Remain here," Xander tells his retainers.

Mascara running, Peri squints at him. Hiccups. A glance to Laslow sees the features of his face pulled taunt with barely bridled outrage. Xander waits for either one of them to speak. Waits to be told he is being unreasonable or unfair. To be told that they will not leave his side.

In the silence that ensues, Xander recognizes that he is the one lingering.

Neither of them move to follow him as he passes through the double doors and into the hallway. The only sound of protest comes from the creaking doors as he begins to shut them. Xander cannot help but stare at his retainers through the closing passage. His eyes snag on the way Peri's hands shake. Snag on Laslow's glare.

This is wrong.

A short-lived thought occurs to him: they should be with him in this as they have been in everything else.

The doors clink shut.

The silence is as short-lived as his earlier impulse. Three inches of solid oak is nothing between them: Peri lets out a horrifying wail unlike any he has heard― and he knows she has never been too shy to raise her voice― while her armour rings out an accompanying cry. She must have struck something with her gauntleted hand.

Stomach twisting in on itself, Xander turns his back to the doors. To them.

Glass shatters.

There is not a doubt in his mind that Peri has smashed a vase. That next she will tear down the twin tapestries in that solar and pull the busts from their pedestals. She will rip them apart. She will see them ruined. All the while, Laslow will wordlessly watch. There may not be a single vase broken by his hand, but he will witness as Peri comes undone. He will be as helpless to stop her as he is unwilling to.

Xander knows how to stop her. Her wildness never frightened him: he relied upon it. It has always compelled her to be authentic in both word and deed. Whenever her emotions would steal her senses and leave her shivering, Xander would take her hand into his own. He would gently squeeze her palm to the rhythm of an age-old lullaby. _Breathe,_ he would tell her. And she would. _Breathe._

Laslow had tried once or twice to calm her using this same technique. It ended with her complaining about the song he hummed. About how he squeezed her hand too hand or too gently for her to be soothed.

The memory makes the edges of his mouth feel like cuts.

The racket does not reach the stables. It is strangely quiet as he climbs from the mounting block onto the saddle. His horse snorts as he readjusts his feet in the stirrups.

Glass shatters.

It is a sound he feels more than he hears. It breaks again and again and scatters into hundreds of pieces. Every shard is sharp-edged and dangerous.

_Ow._

He remembers: a glass sculpture dashes against the floor of _her_ room. It had retaliated by nicking the meat of her thumb.

Squeezing his calves against his horse's sides, Xander asks him to trot.

He used to sit on the floor of her room with one knee bent to his chest. She would rest of the backside of her head against the shin of his outstretched leg. Back then, she had been so small and so scared of the black stone walls and its matching skies. Squeezing her palm brought her no comfort. But it seemed like stories could. He would read to her on that cold floor all the stories that did not belong in Nohr, but _needed_ to.

It had not been enough.

He sinks into his horse's steady and familiar gait. It is a kind of lullaby of its own. His hands tighten on the reins as he reminds himself to breathe.

The air in his lungs turn to nothing when he glances upward.

A long-lived thought occurs to him: this kingdom is as loveless as the dark skies.

It is not a new concept. Nonetheless, it leaves him winded. Xander is dimly aware that something glass is breaking. Or perhaps it had broken long ago. The shards of it he finds lodged in his lungs might be as old as he is.

He half-wishes he had not tried so hard to breathe. Perhaps he would not have noticed then. For this to surface now― it is almost annihilating.

The walls, cobblestone pavement and the plum banners that undulate against the starless sky do not protest his realization. Nohr is loveless. It has been so since the moment Queen Katerina had died. Since the morning that the nobility erected that perverse statue over her grave: the one that shares only her appearance and nothing else. Has been so since his clandestine visit the misty morning after her funeral, where his tiny hands had not been enough to topple the monument.

_She loved the kingdom of Nohr with all her heart,_ his father had said. _ May she rest in peace._ Looking into the cold eyes of the statute, Xander could not understand how either statement could be true.

But he tried.

Servants and nobles alike entreated him to remember her. To love the country as she had. It was an impossible endeavour: whatever there had been to love in this place must have been entombed with his mother. Duty had seemed the closest thing to _love_ that he could ever find. The closest thing to her that he could find. For a split second, he thought he had found her again through it.

A vase smashes against the floor and frees its contents: he is as miserable and lonely as the place he rides through. Nothing he has done or could ever do would change that. Nohr under his rule would be as friendless as it has always been. He can not even bring himself to smile, let alone his people.

Elise smiles, though.

She is quick to do so too. In some ways, she is like Peri: honest in a place that reviles authenticity.

_It'll be okay, I'll fix you right up!_ she said as she wiped the grime of a street from a dropped doll. He remembers her childish books and the way she teased him as she reached for his hand.

For all her foolishness and idealism, she would make a better ruler than he ever would.

Perhaps she will. After all, he is meant for something else.

He remembers: the weight of the final words of a story in his mouth. The weight of her head lifting away from his shin as she rolled onto her stomach to look up at him.

The weightlessness of their smiles.

_Read it again?_

Corrin had never loved Nohr. It is a commonality that makes his stomach knot. Xander wishes they could both look at this kingdom and not find it wanting. It would be so much easier if he could love it absolutely, even if just for a day. Even if just for this hour. Siegfried might not be such a weight in its sheath then.

But Nohr needs him as much as Corrin had needed those stories. It needs him as much as he will need what little it has to offer to face the coming battle.

He will leave the rest to Elise.


End file.
